cured, and her existing debts fully pro- to the citizen a more ample freedom of opinion and pursuit. vided for. To these ends the new Constitution provides that the State shall contract no debt exceeding $1,000,000, unless to meet the exigencies of insurrection or war, except for some single specified object, and with the express approval of the people, signified by a direct vote; and a direct tax must at the time be levied sufficient to pay the annual interest of said debt, and extinguish the principal within eighteen years. It was for such a guaranty, that the necessity for a Convention was first experienced; and though other reforms of perhaps greater intrinsic importance have been superadded, yet to those who have shared in the heat and labor of those long and painful controversies, in the camp and on the plain, in the Legislature, and before the people, growing out of extravagant notions of public improvement and expenditure entertained generally by our political opponents, and unfortunately by some of our political allies-it is to those who have thus combated this slovenly style of statesmanship, a matter of just triumph and congratulation, to find incorporated into our fundamental law, such ample and comprehensive endorsement of every single point of doctrine which they have ever claimed or required. To secure the liquidation of existing debts, and the completion of certain unfinished public works, it is provided that, of the net revenues arising from the canals of this State, $1,300,000 for ten years and $1,700,000 thereafter are to be set apart as a Sinking Fund, to pay the principal and interest of the canal debt; $350,000 until the canal debt is paid, and afterward $1,500,000, to pay the other (or general fund) debt of the State, and $200,000 per annum, (which after eight years may be increased to $350,000,) are to be appropriated from the canal revenue toward defraying generally the expense of the State Government, making $1,850,000 immediately, and $2,400,000 after ten years, to be appropriated from the canal revenues, until the State debt is paid. The balancé of the canal revenues is to be sacredly appropriated to the prosecution and completion of the Erie enlargement, Black River and Genesee Valley Canals. 1. The third article in the bill of rights provides that "the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall for ever be allowed in this State to all mankind; and no person shall be rendered incompetent to be a witness on account of his opinions on matters of religious belief; but the liberty of conscience hereby secured, shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this State." To measure the credibility of a witness by the number or attributes of the Gods he professes to believe in, is scarcely as wise as to make the length of his hair the standard of his veracity. If he be dishonest, he can multiply or substract from the number of his Divinities, to suit the tastes of his tribunal. On the other hand, he can only shorten his hair, he cannot always lengthen it, with the same facility to suit every emergency. 2. The absurd exclusion of ministers of the Gospel from office, which is enforced under the old Constitution, will be no longer known, and we trust now, that these gentlemen will be led to take their fair share in the practical, as well as spiritual interests and responsibilities of life, and place themselves where they may be judged upon their merits, without having their characters and conscience coddled and nursed by constitutional superintendance. VI. It will secure greater purity and fairness in the enjoyment of the elective franchise. 1. By the first section of the second article of the proposed Constitution, it is provided that every person offering to vote shall have been a citizen-naturalized or otherwise-at least ten days, and for thirty days a resident of the district from which the officer voted for is to be chosen. This will prove a valuable restraint upon fraudulent voting, and in some measure contribute to exclude the votes of a large class of strangers, who are brought to the polls at every election, the blind instruments of corrupt and designing politicians. 2. It has, likewise, wisely been deV. The new Constitution will secure termined by the Convention, to submit to the people the question of extending the elective franchise to colored citizens, separately from the rest of the Constitution, that the exact condition of public opinion upon this subject, throughout the State, may be known. The provision upon which the people are to vote is as follows: - Colored male citizens, possessing the qualifications required by the first section of the second article of the Constitution, other than the property qualification, shall have the right to vote for all officers that now are, or hereafter may be, elective by the people, after the first day of January, 1847." This proceeding will probably quiet a painful and much-vexed question, and appease the complaints of a large class of people, who are entitled to have their political claims submitted at least once fairly to the people, and to understand the true state of public sentiment upon the subject. We have thus hurriedly enumerated some of what we esteem the most important novelties embodied in the proposed Constitution. We cannot permit this occasion to pass without alluding to some of its defects, both of omission and commission, to which the preceding analysis has not given us occasion to refer. 1. Foremost among these, we would place the omission to secure every citizen against having his property taken by the State, whether for private or public use, without a fair appraisal by a jury selected from the vicinage, and without just compensation FIRST made to him therefor. 2. The omission to secure to females the right to hold, transfer or devise property as fully after as before marriage. A provision for this purpose was actually adopted by the Convention, taken in terms, we believe, from the Texas Constitution, and was subsequently stricken out by a small majority. 3. The power to create corporations, except under general laws, should have been taken from the Legislature. The proposed Constitution guaranties to them this power as to municipal corporations, and in all other "cases where, in the JUDGMENT OF THE LEGISLATURE, the objects of the corporation cannot be attained under general laws." Even the courts of justice are to be no restraint upon the Legislature, whose judgment is to be the test of the necessity for a special charter. 4. The Legislature should have been prohibited from passing retroactive laws, or laws impairing the obligation of contracts or their remedies. 5. The wise prohibition of the superior judges, from taking fees and perquisites, should have been extended to justices of the peace, upon whom the operation of the practice is far more pernicious, in proportion to the importance of the matters in controversy before them, than it is upon any other class of judges. 6. The judiciary system should have been made uniform and consistent throughout the State. To these we will add those defects in the new Constitution to which we have already referred: 6. The State should have submitted to be prosecuted at law like other municipal corporations. 7. The legislative sessions should have been biennial instead of annual. 8. The senatorial term should not have been abbreviated. 9. The Supreme Court Judges should have been elected from the surface of the whole State, not from the eighths of it. 10. About 4000 justiceships should have been annihilated. It may be perceived from the character of these criticisms that we are not complaining that the Convention have given us a bad Constitution, but that they have given no better one.— There is, we believe, but one change made by them which is not an improvement, and there is not one important omission in the new instrument which does not exist in the old one. As between the two, however, the Constitution of 1846 is the superior, by virtue of every feature of novelty, to which, in the preceding pages, we have endeavored to direct our readers' attention. If it is destined to be adopted, it will effect very important changes in the political condition of the State, and we fervently hope and believe it will purify her political morals. That it will be adopted, no serious doubt can be reasonably entertained, for it will be voted for as it was constructed, without distinction of party. The almost unanimous support it received from the Con vention on its final adoption* affords a reasonable presumption that it will encounter no substantial opposition at the polls. We think it deserves none; and rightly appreciated, it would receive none-but on the other hand, the most cordial support. While it is not every thing that could have been wished, it is more than the most ardent of the constitutional reformers expected when the agitation was commenced, and directly or indirectly sanctions every principle they have advocated. Let the result teach them never to despise the blows of the feeblest arm when struck in defence of a great principle-that in the ever renewing struggles between truth and error the race is not always to the swift, neither is the battle to the strong, and that every person, however obscure or humble may be the pathway of his life, if he firmly ally himself with singleness of purpose to the sacred cause of right, shall surely have the reward of triumph in due season. Some five months since, in these pages, we alluded to the prospective labors of this Convention in the following terms:-"We ask of the Convention to so direct its councils as to effect the three following paramount results by whatever means in their wisdom they may find most efficacious: "1. A reduction and dispersion of political patronage. "2. A restriction of the sphere of government to its legitimate public functions. "3. A restoration of every citizen to the enjoyment of every liberty or privilege not inconsistent with the enjoyment of a corresponding liberty or priv ilege by every other. "If these great results should be accomplished, or even approximated unto by that body, the people, not only of the State but of the whole Union, will have abundant reason hereafter to remember with respect and gratitude the NewYork onstitutional Convention for 1846." We have now only to say, that we think 66 those great results" have not only been approximated unto, but in a great measure accomplished. *The amended Constitution was agreed to by the following vote: AYES.-Messrs. Allen, Angel, Archer, Ayrault, F. F. Backus, H. Backus, Baker, Bascom, Bowdish, Brayton, Bruce. Brundage, Bull, Burr, Cambreleng, R. Campbell, jr., Candee, Chamberlain, Clyde, Conely, Cook, Cornell. Crooker, Cuddeback, Dana, Danforth, Dodd, Dubois, Flanders, Forsyth. Gebhard, Graham, Greene, Harris, Harrison, Hawley, Hoffman, Hotchkiss. A. Huntington, Hutchinson, Hyde, Jones, Kemble, Kernan, Kingsley, Kirkland, Loomis Mann, McNeil, Marvin, Maxwell, Miller, Morris, Munro, Murphy, Nellis. Nicholas, Nicoll, Parish, Patterson, Penniman, Perkins, Porter, Powers, President, Rhodes, Richmond, Riker, Ruggles, Russell, St. John, Salisbury, Sanford, Sears. Shaver, Shaw, Sheldon. E. Spencer. Stanton, Stephens, Stetson, Strong, Swackhamer, Toft, Taggart, J. J. Tavlor, W. Taylor, Tilden, Townsend, Tuthill, Van Schoonhoven, Ward, Warren, Waterbury, Willard, Whitbeck, Worden, A. Wright, W. B. Wright, Yawger, Young, Youngs.-104. NOES. Messrs. E. Huntington, O'Conor, W. H. Spencer, Stow, Talmadge, White-6. [Gov. Bouck, Mr. Brown, Mr. D. D. Campbell, Mr. Chatfield, Mr. Clark, Mr. Gardner, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Jordan, Mr. McNitt, Mr. Simmons, and Mr. Smith, were absent when the vote was taken.] † See Democratic Review, June 1846, p. 420, POLITICAL PORTRAITS WITH PEN AND PENCIL. SILAS WRIGHT, OF NEW-YORK. (With a fine Engraving on steel.) BEFORE another number of this Review issues from the press, the suffrages of the people of the state of New-York will have re-elected the subject of this memoir to the highest office in their gift. In the elevation of a man like Silas Wright to the head of a free government, we recognize the great excellence of our institutions, and the triumph of those principles, inherent in the inhabitants of the United States, that have successfully resisted the encroachments of power, in all its Protean shapes, upon the rights of the people. The direct attacks of the imperial government upon the independence of the colonies, were not more successfully foiled by our ancestors, than have been the insidious encroachments of aristocratic privileges upon the rights of the people in our day, by the clear perception, vigorous intellect, firm integrity, and untiring vigilance, of that class of men, of whom Silas Wright remains to us as a most eminent example. In the course of this sketch, we shall have occasion to show that, on more than one occasion, when the money-power, skillfully directed by unscrupulous party leaders, both in the state and national governments, had effected combinations which threatened to thwart the will of the people, and jeopardize their best interests, the cool judgment, self-possessed firmness, and intellectual vigor, of Mr. Wright, came to the rescue, dispersed the coalitions, and in his luminous exposition of the sophistries advanced in their support, the people recognized the sound reasoning of a faithful officer. Some years since a sketch of the early period of Mr. Wright's life appeared in this Review, and we bring forward a portion as a preface to later events. Silas Wright, Jr., was born in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, on the 24th of May, 1795. Both his two parents were natives of the county of The brothers, Mr. Wright, the father, was indentured as an apprentice to his trade at an early age, and never was at school a day in his life. When he had "served out his time," he could neither read nor write; but with the assistance of his fellow journeyman, he soon qualified himself both to read and to write, as well as to keep accounts and transact business with accuracy and facility. After his marriage his wife became his instructress a service which she performed with all a woman's devotion and alacrity, and with a success proportionate to her own interest in the labor of love, and to the willing docility of her pupil. Silas, like most of the rising youth of New-England, attended the common schools in winter, and worked on the farm in summer, until he had passed his fourteenth year, when he was placed at an academy, that he might be prepared to enter college. The father perceived that his son was rarely endowed by nature, and was therefore the more anxious that he should enjoy the benefits of education denied by circumstances to himself. The tradition is, that he always regarded him with peculiar pride and delight, as destined to be the chief hope and ornament of the family. In August, 1811, Mr. Wright became a student of the college at Middlebury, Vermont, where he remained until the summer of 1815, when he received the first degree of Bachelor of Arts. The elder Mr. Wright has always been an earnest aud determined democrat. He became such during the first contest for the presidency, in 1796, between Adams and Jefferson. On that occasion he supported the latter zealously, and ever after cherished for his name and principles a venera tion which time rather increased than diminished. Between 1800 and 1810, he was repeatedly elected a member of the Legislature, and was ever an ardent and firm republican. He and his oldest son were in the battle of Plattsburg, under Macomb, in September, 1814, when the British fleet was captured on Lake Champlain by M'Donough, and Sir George Prevost with his forces defeated and driven back into Canada. The husbands of two sisters of Mr. Wright were also in that battle as volunteers from the "Green Mountains," although the Federal Governor of Vermont, following the treacherous and cowardly example of Governors Strong of Massachusetts, Jones of Rhode Island, and Griswold of Connecticut, had positively refused to call out a single man to defend the invaded territory and habitations of an adjoining state, on the unworthy position that the militia could not be required to pass beyond the boundary lines of those states of which they were citizens. During the four years passed by Mr. Wright in college, the number of the class to which he belonged averaged about thirty. Then, as now, every student was a politician, and called himself either a federalist or democrat. Of the latter there were in this class only four, of whom it will readily be conceived that young Wright was one of His politics were the most ardent. never better known than at this period of his life. In October, 1815, he commenced the study of the law with Mr. Martindale, who resided at Sandy Hill, Washington county, New-York, where he remained about eighteen months; when he removed to the office of Roger Skinner, Esq., which presented superior opportunities for acquiring a knowledge of the details of business, as he was at that time the attorney of the United States for the northern district of that State. In January, 1819, Mr. Wright completed his preparatory legal studies, and was licensed to practise as an attorney of the Supreme Court of NewYork. His health being impaired by intense application to his books and at his desk, he spent the ensuing summer in travelling on horseback for its restoration, and with the view of selecting a place where he might settle himself permanently. In October, he removed to Canton, in the county of St. Lawrence, and opened an office. The village was new, and the business in the courts both limited and unprofitable, so that the young lawyer made but little by his practice. His superior talents, added to the universal kindliness in his disposition and manners, soon made him highly popular. He was, after but a short residence in his new home, selected as the village postmaster, the captain of the local militia company, justice of the peace, and not long after was commissioned as the Surrogate of the county of St. Lawrence. In all these situations, at the same time that he perfectly discharged every duty devolving on him, he never failed, by an insensible process which, without effort on his own part, was irresistible on the part of others, to make himself the object of a universal and affectionate personal popularity. But a more enlarged public than a village neighborhood soon appreciated justly the abilities, studious habits, attainments and integrity of the young barrister. In the fall of the year 1823, without the slightest expectation of such an event on his part, Mr. Wright was nominated by his democratic friends as a candidate for the office of Senator in the State Legislature. |